I just got a bunch of mini 10's and found they had ubuntu (i didnt order them!).

This is of no use to me so had to get XP on them asap. You would think this is simple, WRONG!!!!!

After much faffing about, reading forums posts and scratching head I got all of them loaded up dead easy. Here is how its done to avoid any annoying mnessages like 'asms not found' or 'cannot find any hard drives' etc.

1. Grab a copy of Windows XP Home or Pro but it MUST BE SERVICE PACK 3(SP3) SP2 WILL NOT WORK WITH THE MINI 10.

2. Goto this site http://www.pctipsbox.com/installing-...b-flash-drive/ and follow it to make a bootable xp install stick. So you have now got yourself a XP USB install stick that you can boot from. Plug it into your mini 10 and hit F12 as it powers up and choose USB MEDIA.

3. It will then boot off your stick, choose option 1 when prompted and the win XP setup program will startup.

4. When you get to the part of the setup where you get to choose the disk to install XP on, MAKE SURE YOU DELETE ALL THE PARTITIONS. Then create a new partition using the whole of the hard drive, choose NTFS quick format.

Now in order to not get the annoying asms error, after the format is complete and it starts copying files, hold the power button down until the mini 10 is turned off. Then go through all of step 4 again, delete the partition you created and make it again. The reason for this step is XP currently sees your hard drive as a 'E' drive instead of a 'C' drive and has to be corrected.

5. So the text part of the setup is done, the mini 10 will reboot. MAKE SURE YOU HOLD THE POWER BUTTON DOWN TO TURN OFF THE MINI 10. This will make sure you have no 'cannot find your install cd' problems. Turn it back on.

Press F12 again to boot off the stick and choose option 2 to start the GUI part of XP setup.

Let the install finish, after you have logged into windows pull the USB stick out of the mini 10. Nearly done now, just need to correct the boot.ini file so it trys to boot the mini 10 not the USB.

5. Lets get the 'My computer' icon onto the desktop, right click the desktop and choose properties. Click desktop tab, click the 'customize desktop' button and tick the box for my computer. keep clicking 'ok' until your back to the desktop.

You now have an icon for my computer, right click it and choose properties. click the ADVANCED tab, under 'Startup and Recovery' click the 'settings' button. click the 'edit' button.

6. You now have the boot.ini file opened up for editiing. Delete everything in it and copy the part below in its place. MAKE SURE YOU DO IT EXACTLY. BETTER TO COPY IT ONTO A STICK AND THEN YOU CAN PASTE IT.

[Boot Loader]
Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S

(there should be so space in window s, its just how the forum is formatting it)

7. Make sure the stick is unplugged and do a restart. Windows will now boot.! woohoo!